Steam Boiler
The above is the solid fueled Firebox. At the heart of many industrial centers you will find a tentacled monster of a machine called a Steam Boiler. These machines can produce enough Steam to meet the energy needs of any complex. They may appear daunting at first, but our experts are here to help you install your own! Now, when building a Steam Boiler, the first layer put down must be the Firebox. We presently offer two types of Fireboxes. Solid Fueled, which burns normal furnace fuels such as Charcoal or Coal Coke, and Liquid Fueled, which uses liquid fuels such as Creosote Oil, Biofuel, and good old fashioned Fuel . Once you've laid down the Firebox, you must build a Boiler Tank above it. Boiler Tanks come in two varieties: Low Pressure and High Pressure. The difference being that High Pressure Boiler Tanks produce twice the steam, but the Low Pressure Boiler Tanks are generally more efficient. Each cubic meter of Low Pressure Boiler Tank produces 10 Steam/tick which is enough to run a single Hobbyist's Steam Engine at full capacity or a Commercial Steam Engine at half capacity, basically 2 MJ /t. Each cubic meter of High Pressure Boiler Tank produces 20 Steam/tick, sufficient to run a Commercial Steam Engine at full capacity or an Industrial Steam Engine at half capacity, basically 4 MJ/t. The larger the Steam Boiler, the more efficient it is in terms of fuel usage. You will be generally better off building a single large Boiler instead of several small ones. The caveat being that its better to build Low Pressure Boilers rather than High Pressure if you want maximum fuel efficiency for short runs (where the boiler doesn't reach maximum temperature). If you're running your boilers round the clock, you get exact same amount of steam per unit of fuel. The size of the tank you can build depends on the size of the Firebox. A 1x1 Firebox can only handle a single cubic meter tank. The 2x2 can handle 8 or 12 cubic meters of Boiler Tank. And finally, the massive 3x3 can handle 18, 27, or 36 cubic meters of Boiler Tank. Once you've built your Steam Boiler, you will need to provide it water and fuel. A word of warning, you must supply a constant steady stream of water to the Firebox (not the Tanks) or you run the risk of a massive Boiler explosion. Introducing water to a hot and dry Boiler is exceptionally dangerous. That said, Boilers are pretty safe so long as the water supply is constant. Once the steam boiler is up and ready, BuildCraft pipes can be used to cool it and to extract the steam, although Liquiducts work better. A single Aqueous Accumulator at full speed beneath the firebox/boiler is enough to cool any boiler and doesn't require pipes. Some math Each cubic meter of High Pressure Boiler produces Steam at 20 Steam/tick, so a 36 cubic meters High Pressure Boiler can produce up to 720 Steam/tick, powering 18 RailCraft Industrial Steam Engines, that requires 40 Steam/tick each one and produce 8 MJ, for a total of 144 MJ. After some testings a 36 cubic meters High Pressure Boiler needs approximately 1,932k heat to reach 100°C (from 20°C), and approximately 22,300k heat to reach 1000°C (from 20°C). This means that you need 696,875 Millibuckets(mB) of Bio-Fuel (in an iron tank for example) to reach full heat. On a fully heated (1000°C) 36 cubic meters High Pressure Boiler, one bucket of biofuel (32k heat) lasted approximately 101 seconds which means 1k heat of fuel each 3.1566 seconds. Each 1k heat of fuel will produce 45,455 steam which can be used on 3 Steam Turbines for 14,205 EU at 225 EU/t (100 EU/p) or on engines for 9,091 MJ. If this 9,091 MJ are used on a Magma Crucible with Cobblestone and a Thermal Generator will generate 11,364 EU or 22,728 EU if the Magma Crucible is using Netherrack. On a 1 cubic meter High Pressure Boiler it requires near 30k heat to reach 1000°C. At 1000°C 1k heat of fuel will burn for 63.3 seconds, will generate 25,320 steam which can be converted to 5,064 MJ or 7,912.5 EU at 6.25 EU/t (100 EU/p) using a Steam Turbine. Recipes (Citation: Railcraft Wiki" Video Category:Railcraft Category:Structure